Toronto’s Nick Nurse Is The 2019-20 NBA Coach Of The Year

Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse is the 2019-20 NBA Coach of the Year, the league announced on Saturday. The second-year head coach won the award for the first time in his career, becoming the first coach to be selected as Coach of the Year in both the NBA and NBA G League. Nurse also becomes the third Toronto coach in history to win the honor, following Sam Mitchell in 2007 and Dwane Casey in 2018.

On Saturday, Nurse’s high school basketball coach, Wayne Chandlee, appeared on TNT to personally give him the news. Nurse joined the Inside the NBA crew for an interview, but was surprised by the cameo and the news.

“Thanks a lot, man,” Nurse told the TNT crew after they showed Chandlee’s video. “That’s really cool. Coach Chandlee’s a great man. A great man, a great coach. Had him come to training camp just about every year for as long as I’ve been coaching back in in the States so it kind of all started with him. So that’s really cool that he got to come on here today.”

According to the voting results, the Toronto coach received 90 first place votes. Milwaukee Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer and the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Billy Donovan rounded out the top three, with five and four first place votes, respectively.

One year after leading the Raptors to their first-ever championship, Nurse has helped the team continue to succeed this year — despite the loss of Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard to the Los Angeles Clippers in the offseason. This year, Toronto finished the regular season in 2nd place in the Eastern Conference with a 53-19 overall record. Early this year, Nurse led the Raptors to a franchise-record 15-game winning streak that culminated on Feb. 10.

Since arriving in the bubble at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, the Raptors have impressed and are currently leading the Brooklyn Nets 3-0 in the first round of the playoffs.